Drawers are commonly mounted in furniture frames using drawer slide assemblies. A first drawer slide is mounted to the furniture frame, and a second drawer slide is mounted to the drawer. Often a third drawer slide is provided between the first and second drawer slides to enhance the reach of the drawer and allow a full and complete extension outside the furniture frame. This configuration makes objects in the rear of the drawer more accessible to the user.
The drawer slides facilitate the orientation and alignment of the drawer as it travels in and out of the furniture frame. Further, the drawer slides enhance the slideability of the drawer by providing a low friction sliding means through the use of wheels, rollers or the like. This provides a significant advantage over wooden drawer frames.
For a variety of reasons, often a drawer must be removed from the drawer slide system. In the past, this involved careful extraction of the drawer and one or more of the drawer slide members from the furniture frame. Often, the drawer slide would be screwed into the drawer requiring tools to disassemble the system.
To facilitate removal of a drawer from the furniture frame, various attempts have been made to provide a means for releasably mounting a drawer and drawer slides to the furniture frame. One such attempt is presented in U.S. Pat. No. 5,281,021 to Rock et al., which provides drawer guide assemblies on respective opposite sides of a drawer for guiding sliding movement of said drawer, each said drawer guide assembly including a pull-out rail to be slideable with said drawer during sliding movement thereof, and means for removeably attaching said drawer to said pull-out rails so that said drawer may be removed from said pull-out rails without removing said pull-out rails from said drawer guide assemblies. The means for removeably attaching the drawer include a pull-out rail having a catch edge, a drawer having a catch element having formed thereon a plurality of stop surfaces that are staggered and offset relative to each other in a direction inclined to a direction of sliding movement of said drawer and to a longitudinal direction of said pull-out rail, thereby ensuring that one of said stop surfaces will align with an abut said catch edge and means for urging said catch element toward said pull-out rail so that said stop means will abut said catch edge.
This design provides an apparatus for releasing a drawer from a drawer slide, but requires a user to reach around the side of the drawer to actuate a lever for releasing the stop surfaces from the catch edge. Further, this system requires specialized design of the drawer slides to provide a “catch edge” for the stop surfaces to engage.
Another similar device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,473,626 to Staye, wherein an upper surface of the drawer slide is formed with a notch, a rail is connected on a side of the drawer and rests on the drawer slide, and a catch is connected to the rail, the catch releasably engaging the notch in the drawer slide.
Again, in this design, the latching and unlatching mechanism is located on the side of the drawer and incorporated into the drawer slide system making the unlatching of the drawer from the drawer slide system difficult for a user to access.
Thus, there is a need for a simple, yet secure system for releasably attaching a drawer to a drawer slide system, where the engagement means are located near the front of the drawer and preferably on the underside of the drawer where their access is not impeded by the drawer slide members.
It would further be desirable to provide such a system that is easily incorporated into present drawer slide systems without the need for complex redesign of the drawer slides or other components.